“A most trying and puzzling case. There seems to have been absolutely no injury to the brain, that can be recognized. None of the ordinary causes seem to have any share in the causation of this. I can do nothing for you to-day. I will try every means known to us in succession, and report to you day by day.” I felt baffled and seriously puzzled. It was most essential that I should get the story the moment the man recovered, if he did recover. It was equally essential that I should be free to hunt for new clues. Dorothy saw my anxiety. “What is it, Mr. Orrington?” she questioned. “Simply wondering how I could be in two places at the same time--here waiting and on the coast searching,” I answered. “I can settle that,” said she. “I am going to take a week of observing in Tom’s research laboratory, and I’ll be right in reach of a telephone every minute.” I objected in vain. Dorothy settled matters as she had settled them before. Tom and I were to go down the coast in the Black Arrow, returning every night to New York. She was to remain in the city. I reported my findings to the paper, and still the chief said, “Wait! Don’t write anything till you have more. Keep at it till you have something.” Morning after morning we telephoned the hospital and found no change. Day after day we spent in the Black Arrow, searching the coast, or in the motor car, skirting the shores. Evening after evening we spent in the library at the Haldanes’, in endless discussion and consultation. The country was daily growing more and more alarmed. Rumors of war, of foreign fleets coming to attack our shores, filled the papers. Stories that the Alaska had been sent to the Pacific and had been seen in South American ports, that she had been seen in European waters, that she had struck a derelict and, badly disabled, was coming slowly in, were current. Every story run to earth proved a fake, and every day had a new story. The Government knew no more than any one else, and had been driven to a sphinx-like silence in self-defence. They had employed, as had the newspapers, every known means of getting some news of the battleship, but all in vain. The Alaska had disappeared on Monday or Tuesday of the first week in July. On Tuesday, we had found the man who was still gazing with unseeing eyes at the bare wall of the hospital room, still moaning the same cry. In six days he had never varied it but twice, and both those times he repeated his words in the cottage, “The sea, the awful sea.” Experiment after experiment had been tried without avail. Two consultations with the best alienists of the city had given Dr. Forrester no more light. Six days of searching the coast gave us not a single clue. On Monday night we reached the wharf about six, to find Dorothy waiting for us in the automobile. As we rode up town she rapidly explained the plan for the evening.